General News

School of Physics and Astronomy Professor Prisca Cushman has created a Youtube video of the Dark Matter Music Box which uses data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) and converts them into sound and light.

he Music Box was the creation of musician, Karl Ramberg, who was looking for novel ways to create new music. His brother Erik was a member of CDMS, so along with Cushman and postdoc Duong, they figured out a way to musically translate the data files to accurately display the energy, location, and type of particles striking the detector.

Cushman has made a proposal to the Science Museum of Minnesota to create a Dark Matter Music Box display for the museum which will allow visitors to play the music box in real time using the most recent data collected by CDMS. Cushman is also one of the current Scientists on the Spot on the Museum's web site http://dev.smm.org/buzz/museum/ask